Grapevine Flower Buds

We are seeing a lot more flower buds this year on our vines. In looking back at some of our photos from last year, we can see that we also had flower buds around June 4th so the vines seem to be right on schedule. On Sunday evening into Monday, we had a soaking rain which we are very thankful for, since we are still working on the well pump installation design and details.

Vineyard Scooter

In the crush of work that came with planting our 4200 vines, we totally forgot that the day after the final vines went in was our 32nd wedding anniversary. Trust my husband to find the appropriate gift to celebrate the occasion. Granted, it came a few days late and there was some assembly required, but yesterday, safely tucked away in the back of our truck was this little orange beauty. My husband encouraged me to have a seat and propel myself down our 800 foot row of vines to begin to tie the vines to the pencil rod. It did work, I was able to sit, and I found a way to roll myself down the vineyard alley, but there needs to be some serious rock removal and weed mowing before a certain comfort level can be reached. However, it was nice to be able to sit down at the half way point and have a sip of cold water that I was able to put into the wire basket in the back. Maybe for our 50th wedding anniversary, he can get me a motorized vineyard scooter. I'll need it by then.

New Tab: Irrigation

After planting our vines, we have been crossing our fingers so that we would have some rain. Many of our friends who came to plant the 4200 vines were also crossing their fingers with us. Overnight on Sunday and into Monday morning, we were the beneficiaries of 1/2-inches of rain. This gives us a little breathing room so that we can get our irrigation pump so that we can use the irrigation system that we installed in November 2015-January 2016.
We've done a lot of research and work regarding the consideration of water in our vineyard and I thought that I would summarize it under a New Tab: Irrigation. I thought that it was important enough so I placed it right after the Viticulture tab above.
You will find the following blogposts under the Irrigation tab:
Soil Texture and Water Holding Capacity---Part 1
Evapotranspiration and Irrigation---Part 2
Precipitation in Connecticut
Ways to Measure Vineyard Water Status
Video on How to Use a Pressure Chamber
Well Drilling and Dowsers
Irrigation is Vital
An Acre Inch of Water
Determining When and How Much to Irrigate
Dowsing for Water: My husband is a Believer
Well?
Well! It's a Gusher
Trench Digging for Our Irrigation System
Assembling the Irrigation Pipe
Installing Our Irrigation System

It's Not Over Til the Nursery is In

Although we finished the planting of our vines on Wednesday, May 18th, we still had loose ends to tie up. We had about 150 extra plants to plant in our nursery. This task took us about 2 days since we were running on fumes as the end of the week approached. We did get the nursery in:

Since the nursery plants had been sitting in water for about a week, they were beginning to bud out. I wondered how the waxed vines, Cabernet franc ENTAV 214 were going to bud out of the wax, but they did. I think that waxing the vine is a good way to protect the new buds. The Cabernet franc was the only variety that came waxed.

Videos: Countdown to the Final Vine

This past Wednesday, May 18th was a truly auspicious day. It was the culmination of 6 days of planting 4200 vines and you can be sure that we captured the moment in some videos. This video is a demonstration on how we planted our vines.

• The holes were dug with a dingo that we rented for approximately 2 weeks.
• After the hole was dug, we put in the pencil rod which was attached to the fruiting wire as a guide to where the vine should be planted.
• When it came to planting the vine, my husband made 8 tampeners that you can see in this upcoming video. The tampeners helped in gently getting the soil around the roots of the vine in the hole which in some cases were about 18 inches deep.
• You can see that the video is about a minute long so it did take approximately that amount of time to plant each vine.

Our friend, the lineman took a video of the last vine being planted. I called it our "golden spike vine" and my husband got to do the honors.

We've said it before in previous blogposts, but our friends were just amazing!

6 Days 30 People 4200 Vines

Our friends are just the best in the world! We had about 30 people come to help us over the May 14th and 15th weekend and we were able to plant approxinmately 13 out of 26 rows of vines. In corporate lingo, we met our stretch goals and had fun doing it.
Some of our friends mentioned that they now have a new appreciation when they drink wine. Another one of our friends mentioned that they now know what the old adage "long row to hoe" is all about. Here is a summary of what we did shown on the left.
It began with pre-drilling all of the holes that we anticipated we would be planting with vines. The task could not have been accomplished without the help of Our Lineman who had a system of pulling back our fruiting and catch wires so that the dingo could drill the hole.

It took approximately 10 days of work but, 16 days of elapsed time due to equipment failure, rain, etc. The pre-drilled holes were key to getting the vines planted. (video to follow)
We had a skeleton crew (Team Long Pond, Bob C., Tiffany, Rich, Brad and Marty) on Monday and Tuesday and finished all 26 rows of planting on Wednesday. Here is a photo of the elated crew at the end of the planting.
Mother Nature blessed us with days that were sunny with a touch of coolness and a little breeze whenever the sun felt too warm. The afternoons were breezy and it could get really cold, but all of us persevered and this seemingly daunting task got done. At the end of the planting, our lineman took a video of my husband planting the last vine, our veritable golden spike. My husband provided a little bit of bubbly to celebrate this auspicious occasion and there was talk of Team Long Pond putting in their own vineyard. They were going to call it Eight Ball Vineyard and already had a name for their white wine---Cue Ball White. I think it was the champagne talking. We were all a little tipsy and glad to see the last vine planted.
We would like to thank everyone who came to help us plant our vineyard!

Planting Pitfalls

We have approximately 4200 holes in our vineyard and this is frog migration time. We did not know this until my husband found frogs in our holes while he worked ahead of the planting crew, cleaning out the fallen soil. On the first day, he saw as many as 8 frogs that had fallen into the plant pit. Of course, he stopped to rescue these frogs. The frog shown on the left is a tree frog. The identifying markings are the bright yellow flash patches on the rear of its thighs. He also asked if anyone saw a frog in the hole, to please "catch and release" the frogs before planting the grapevine.
Many of us were just focussed on planting the vine and not in the mode of frog rescue, so unfortunately, some of the frogs may have unwittingly become part of the circle of life as frog fertilizer. I'm sure those grapevines will be the strong and fast growing ones.
On Sunday, toward the end of one of the rows that we were planting, my husband saw this salamander. The photo was captured by one of our young planters on his iPhone. There are 12 native species of salamander in Connecticut. My husband thinks that it is the marbled salamander according to the DEEP Salamanders of Connecticut information.

We are rapidly filling the holes with plants so hopefully, none of the amphibian wildlife in our vineyard will become fertilizer, but today, we did see a mother mouse and her three young offspring in one of the holes. They were rescued and set free so that some hawk or falcon could have a tasty morsel.

Circumventing Child Labor Laws

We needed every able bodied person to help us plant our vineyard so when our friends came with their children, my husband taught them the finer points of tampening the soil. We've known our friend's children since they were newborns and have seen them grow. They helped my husband plant 4 Cabernet sauvignon clone 412 in the north end of the field in row 31. Those plants have their names on them. After they were trained, they helped their father and mother plant more vines.
Today is their 10th birthday----Happy Birthday you two!!!

Planting Day 1

Yesterday was the first of the weekend planting day festivities. We arrived on the land around 7:30, our hunter was just on his way out of the property. The vines were ready and waiting and the start time was 9 a.m. The morning was a little damp because it had rained overnight, which was perfect for the Auxerrois vines that we planted yesterday. My husband made one last check on the holes and removed any soil that caved in.

The first people to arrive was Team Long Pond. But within a few minutes of that, my friend with the donuts, coffee, and fresh fruit came and we set up the under the blue tent.
In no time, our full crew arrived and we were ready to begin planting. We started with a short demo of the process which began with forming teams of two. One person would hold the vine and shovel in some soil and the other person would tamp the soil and the process was repeated until the hole was filled. In going down the alley, a vine was distributed to two rows simultaneously and in this way, we planted Cabernet franc clone 327 in the farthest east row and Cabernet franc clone 214 in the next row. Everyone congregated at the beginning of the row experimenting with this procedure of planting a grapevine. Here is a view from the foreman/tractor driver with our morning crew.

After the crew was confident enough of the process, what we did was to have the teams of two take one section which consisted of 5 vines from one line post to another. After planting 5 vines, each team of two was able to leapfrog another team that was planting the next 5 vines. Psychologically, it felt like progress, being able to leapfrog over other teams planting vines. Mother Nature was also being benevolent: the sun was shining, a gentle breeze was blowing and the vineyard birds were chirping.

We were able to plant the Cabernet franc, the next two rows of Cabernet sauvignon clone 412 and began the next two rows of Chardonnay ENTAV clone 96 or approximately 1000 vines before our lunch break!
After lunch, we finished up the half rows of Chardonnay and planted another two rows of Chardonnay clone 96 before the day ended. In all, we planted all of the Cab franc, Cab sav and Chardonnay clone 96. What an amazing crew we have!

More Planting Preparations

The vines are here! On Thursday, after we received our 2 pallets of vines, we uncrated them and put them into the refrigerated truck that we are borrowing from our neighbors. The boxes that the vines came in were a little crushed and not in the best condition. We needed to prepare the Auxerrois because we intended to plant these vines on Friday. This planting would tell us how feasible our plan of kick soil into the hole, tamp, tamp, tamp, more soil, tamp, tamp, tamp, and move on would be. We were able to cut the roots of our 160 Auxerrois clone 2 and 30 Auxerrois clone 1 and then called it a day.
On Friday morning, we went to the land at 7:00. We had an ambitious schedule. My husband wanted to mow all the alleys so the weeds would be tamed, I had 2 more rows of pencil rods to fasten and the staging area to "mow" with our push line trimmer. Our friend Mary arrived at 9 and we began preparing the Cabernet franc and Cabernet sauvignon for planting.

Mary and I got into a good system. We were humming along. She did the cutting of the roots while I held it taut. If you saw the process, you would think that I would be getting my fingers chopped. Mary did tell me a story about the Vikings and head chopping while we were doing this. Not exactly reassuring.
When noon came around, we switched to planting mode. My husband believed that we were able to plant 160 vines in 1 hour and 30 minutes. So, our plan of kick soil into the hole, tamp, tamp, tamp, more soil, tamp, tamp, tamp, and move on seems to work. We ended the work day by preparing our Chardonnay ENTAV clones 96 and 76 in the pouring rain. We were able to get everything done that we wanted to do on Friday, which was really exceeding all expectations. Hope all goes well today. I'll let you know.

Preparing the Staging Area for Planting

Early Wednesday morning, we received word that our vines would not be delivered on the scheduled day, Wednesday, but would arrive on Thursday. There was no dearth of things to do to prepare for the delivery, in other words, we still had so many things to do, so we went about our work.
Yesterday morning, we got up to the land at 9 a.m. and Barry, (aka our lineman) had already set up the tent and the portapotty delivery person was just putting this luxury item in the appropriate location. Once again, we were able to borrow our neighbor's refrigerated van for storing the vines.
We decided that we would be planting from the east side of our vineyard which would consist of Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay ENTAV clone 96 and Chardonnay ENTAV clone 76 so the staging area was set up in this way.

After the portapotty arrived, we worked on getting more pencil rods into the pre-drilled holes and my husband went to get some water in the IBC tanks to have it ready in the staging area. Time passed and the vines were no where in sight. We were given a delivery window which was from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The lineman and I were getting hungry so my husband went to get some lunch and we enjoyed it on a perfect spring day with a little cooling breeze. Still no delivery.
Barry had errands to run since he has a big event coming up for him in Philadelphia this weekend so he left us to continue our watch. At 3 p.m. on the dot, the FedEx truck pulled into our drive way.

Jim was the FedEx delivery person and in the truck were 2 big pallets containing our vines! Hurray!!!!

Turkey Distraction

We are in the midst of preparing for the arrival of our plants and have sent out a message to our friends that we will have a plant fest this weekend. When we went up to the land on Tuesday morning, we saw the turkeys at the far end of the vineyard and some of the males were displaying their plummage.

We slowly drove our truck to where the turkeys were and got a few photos of them. We let our hunter know that the turkeys were there and the following morning, he sent us this photo on the left with a message saying
"One less turkey in the vineyard".

Annual Meeting for the CT Chapter of the SoCR

This past weekend, we were invited to attend the annual meeting of the Connecticut Chapter of the Society of Cellar Rats. We considered it to be an honor to be asked to attend this gathering, which we heard has been taking place for at least the last 30 years. To be a member of the Cellar Rats, one must actually work in a vineyard or winery and if possible bring a sample of their labor. The last time we attended this event we had just begun our labor of love (working in the vineyard) so we had no product to share. Time passes and this year we were able to bring one bottle of our very limited edition wine. We were invited to attend this event hosted by Howard Bursen, winemaker at Sharpe Hill Winery, by Dave, the vineyard manager of Saltwater Farm.

Howard was a gracious host, providing us with home made pizzas. He was aided in the hosting of this party by Margie from Westford Hill Distillers. We were asked to introduce ourselves. I met Joe, who purchased Heritage Trail Vineyards in Lisbon and we had a nice long chat about the business. In attendance was Warren Strong, from Fitchclaremont Vineyard Bed and Breakfast in Bozrah, who hasn't changed a bit from the last time we got together. I also met Larry McCullough, who was the winemaker at Chamard. Also in attendance was our friend Steve Sawyer from Preston Ridge Vineyard and Mike McAndrew, winemaker at Stonington Vineyards along with our friend Dave and his wife Pat. I met Mike, Danny and (Justin?) from Jonathan Edwards. Mike, the winemaker, has been with Jonathan Edwards since they first began the vineyard in North Stonington. I also got a chance to speak with Danny, who is the assistant vineyard manager. It turned out that we knew his wife Lis, who became a master gardener after she met us in 2010 at Fresh, New London. It's a small world. We had a wonderful time at Howard's place.

New Tab: Insect Pests

This morning, I compiled a list of all of the insect pests that I've blogged about and created a new tab called Insect Pests. The new tab contains the following information that I will be adding to. The name of the insect pest is clickable and goes to the blogpost that gives more information about the insect.

Spotted Wing Drosophila Drosophila suzukii	Beetlemania
Cutworm/Large Yellow Underwing Noctua pronuba	Eight Spotted ForesterAlypia octomaculata
Grape Flea BeetleAltica chalybea	Grape Leaf SkeletonizerHarrisina americana
Pandorus Sphinx MothEumorpha pandorus	Spotted Lanternfly Lycorma delicatula

Visit from Forester and Audubon Scientist

Yesterday, we were visited by Eric (Forester) and Corrie (Audubon scientist) to do a bird identification and count in our forest that consists of approximately 25 acres located to the east side of our vineyard. We put in an application for the Connecticut Audubon Habitat Assessment program last year and were selected to participate in it. Eric and Corrie and our friend, Frost, whom we invited to join us, gathered on the property at 9 a.m. yesterday. For a day in May, it was unseasonably cold and threatening to rain.

Walking the forest with Eric and Corrie was like having our own personal tree and bird expert to whom we could ask all kinds of questions. Korrie would listen and say, "Did, you hear that, that was the sound of a bluewinged warbler". According to Corrie, it makes a "bee buzz" call that she picked up, as soon as we approached the forest.

Bluewinged Warbler Vermivora cyanoptera Call: bee-buzz
Field Sparrow Spizella pusilla Call: Like a bouncing ball coming to rest
Eastern Towhee Pipilo erythrophthalmus Call: drink-your-tea
Downy Woodpecker Picoides pubescens Call: Pik,whinny and drum
Black-capped Chickadee Poecile atricapillus Call: fee-bee
American Goldfinch Spinus tristis Call: po-ta-to chippppp
Ovenbird Seiurus aurocapilla Call: teacher teacher
Woodthrush Hylocichla mustelina Call: ee-oo-lay
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker Sphyrapicus varius Call:
Tufted titmouse Baeolophus bicolor Call: peter-peter (I hear it as Jeeter Jeeter, and I am not a Yankee fan)

Frost and I thought that it was a very interesting and educational day which we really enjoyed. More details on what we saw in the forest will follow in a future blog.
References:
All of the photos and information in the bird table were retrieved from:
1. Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

He is Our Lineman for Our Vineyard

We are almost done with drilling our 4000+ holes in preparation for our planting. We couldn't have done it without our friend, Barry, whom we have anointed "Our Lineman". Barry takes down all of our fruiting wire and catch wires so that we can use the dingo to drill the holes. The tricky part comes at the ends of the rows when the wire has to be pulled back. He has a system that we are ignorant of, so he is assured of job security. We drilled holes for 26 rows of vines that we will be planting in approximately 2 weeks.
Thanks Barry, we couldn't have done it without you!